The exemplary embodiment relates to public transportation planning and finds particular application in connection with a system and method for identifying support for a transportation service in advance of its introduction.
Planning and managing of public transportation networks are typically complex processes, especially when a transport provider, such as a city, has to make decisions about new transportation services or changing existing ones. For example, the city may be considering introducing new bus lines or modifying existing ones. As part of the planning, the city would like to understand the key parameters that will affect how the local population will respond to the changes to the transportation network.
There are problems, however, in that the transport provider often lacks information which would help it to understand what would be the consequences of potential modifications of public transportation services (e.g., bus lines). For example, it would be helpful to know whether sufficient commuters will make use of the proposed service to make it financially viable and also whether the use of existing services will be impacted. At the same time, the local government would also like to support organizations in the region and to meet the transportation needs of those organizations, where feasible. While some information can be collected from existing commuters by conducting surveys at various locations in the transportation network, these can be time consuming and do not reach individuals currently not using public transport, who may be interested in using a new or modified service that was convenient for them.
Another problem is that commuters and the organizations to which they commute would often like to have some influence in the planning decisions, based on their needs. While surveys may be used to predict the impact of transportation service modifications, they are often used to collect and aggregate feedback on modifications which have already been implemented. Even when they are used to collect preliminary interest from a sampled population, the responses do not indicate the level of commitment of the respondents to the survey. The organizations also lack influence on the planning of the transportation network such that modifications are made which would help them to become more attractive to employees and clients.
There remains a need for a system and method which enables the different actors impacted by transportation modifications to participate in the planning of such modifications in a way which allows the transport provider to have confidence that the modification will be advantageous.